


never thought i'd get any higher (never thought you'd fuck with my brain)

by chloebaeprice



Series: fault lines tremble underneath my glass house [1]
Category: Babylon (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Dark, Blood, Depression, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Ideation, Unreliable Narrator, anger problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 06:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chloebaeprice/pseuds/chloebaeprice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fingernails clawing deep past his eyelids, tearing the soft tissue underneath, the color of his eyes exploding under the pressure—his throat is lined with glass and his screams are shattering it everywhere—</p>
            </blockquote>





	never thought i'd get any higher (never thought you'd fuck with my brain)

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically just a love letter to Bertie Carvel because I’m trash. Each section separated with a number signifies a change of perspective. Each perspective will be from a different version of Finn (think of alternate universes). If any part of this is confusing or ambiguous, that’s okay. It’s supposed to be.

_never thought all this could expire_

_never thought you'd go break the chain_

_me and you baby_

_still flush all the pain away_

_so before i end my day_

_remember_

_my sweet prince_

_you are the one_

—my sweet prince, placebo

 

 

 

 

**I**

Finn looks like shit. Or at least, that’s what Elizabeth keeps telling him.

He thinks of himself as a rather self-aware guy, and that allows him to admit that his perspective is  ~~not to be trusted~~  rather skewed.

Can he really be expected to know what’s considered fashionable now-a-days though? He would rather be focused on more important things, like the way his next door neighbor’s dress is hugging her ass just right. (C’mon. He’s a hot-blooded male. He can’t be blamed for looking now can he? Besides it was just a peek.)  
  
“Going somewhere?”  
  
Hearing Elizabeth speak interrupts his, he can admit, rather inappropriate train of thought.  
  
“What?” Glancing away from Elizabeth allows him to realize that he’s been standing on the curb next to his car, his keys in hand, just staring at his attractive neighbor while she carries her groceries from her car. And now she’s walking up to him.  
  
Nodding at his car, Elizabeth says, “Night out? Going somewhere fun?”  
  
“Just have to grab a few things at my mate’s place. I’m not really one to go out and party.” Jesus Christ, his throat feels like fucking sandpaper. Elizabeth’s hair blows in the wind, the blonde strands a stark contrast in the gloomy parking lot, like a beacon of light in a stormy sea.  
  
Her grin was a filthy, feral thing. If his description of her appearing angel-like to him was a mirror, that grin was the equivalent of her putting a crack in it. A stark diagonal crack, pretty in its destruction.  
  
No matter. He never really was one for cliché metaphors anyway.

 

 

 

 

**II**

The truth is: he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he can’t help but apply all those bullshit metaphors to himself, stuff like  _he’s a hopeless wanderer trying to find a person who will accept him and all his flaws and who he can see himself settling down with—_  
  
Another truth that contradicts that but is no less true: he’s nothing more than a grifter, really. He takes from good people, takes advantage of their kindness like the greedy bastard he is. That’s all he does. He tells himself he doesn’t believe there’s any goodness left in the world, when actually he just doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t believe there is any goodness left in  _himself—_  
  
And all of the above truths are something he refuses to confess to anyone, even himself.  
  
What keeps him from falling apart: his father’s voice telling him  _no son of mine is a weak pussy, you keep telling yourself whatever you need to, but by the end of the day I expect you to not act like a fucking coward_.  
  
So he doesn’t.

 

 

 

 

Imagine this: him managing to trust a complete stranger on the fucking streets, or in a fucking alley, more than he trusts himself. They could have a fucking knife in their hand, looking about five second away from stabbing him and leaving him to bleed out, but he can still manage to put faith in them that they won’t do it, that they’ll do the right thing, the morally good thing and leave him be—but when has that stopped him, huh, when has he extended the same courtesy to anyone, so maybe he would deserve to be murdered in that kind of situation, you know, because of karma and all that—  
  
The thing is, he doesn’t actually believe in karma. How could he, when he knows that there will always be people who get away with doing all kinds of horrible things. Vile things that make even him look like a saint. And of course, then there are the people who get punished too much for their wrongdoings. They screw up once, not even something that major, and they get an excessive amount of suffering that they don’t really deserve. But no one will say anything about it, not even the people who claim to care about that person, not even the people closest to them. No, they won’t stand up against society, they’ll ignore the unjust punishments, as long as it doesn’t affect  _them_ , they’ll ignore what’s right in front of them because they can’t be bothered—

 

 

 

 

You see, the real reason he lost faith in humanity, in goodness, the core truth of it is that: he lost faith in himself. But he’ll tell you otherwise. He’ll tell you that life dealt him a crappy hand, that one day he just gave up trying to make an effort at school, that he couldn’t care less about academics and after years of trying his best to keep the façade up (and somehow failing every time), he dropped out and it gave him relief that he no longer had to stay in that hellhole.  
  
What he won’t say: that it was a miracle he even got out of bed every morning as a student, that his achievements felt like small white dots on a whiteboard compared to the big black streaks of his failures, his screw-ups, all those times he let his parents down.  
  
He won’t tell you about how many times killing himself felt like the best solution and how it still does, to this day, because while he doesn’t regret not finishing school, the fact that he truly believed he wasn’t capable of being successful in life and finishing school with good enough grades to get a career—just the idea of that ruins him.

 

 

 

 

He’s never told anyone that the reason he did bad in school is because he was depressed for years—the mental illness, not what everyone says they are when they’ve had a bad day because real depression, the kind he has, is not that fleeting, oh, but he wish it was, maybe then he would be a better person in life—finding the motivation to do an endless amount of work at school when you’re depressed is harder than you think if you don’t have depression yourself. His self-worth lowered with his grades. How could he have been expected to dutifully do so much hard work when all he gets in return is letter grades that judge him and his capabilities as a person, his intelligence, when in reality, he probably understands the material (or at least, has the capability to learn it but chooses not to), but instead who he is minimized to meaningless letters (A, B, C, D, and F but what about E it’s almost like whoever came up with the grading system didn’t know there ABCs which would be ironic wouldn’t it.)  
  
The question is: how is that fair?  
  
The answer: it’s not and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

 

 

 

**III**

He met her in a crowded train station, standing next to the glittering windows of a train. She was wearing a black dress and black heels. Her outfit contrasted beautifully with her blonde hair. Black will never go out of style, now would it?  
  
The train station smelt overwhelmingly of sweat, heat and gasoline. An overcrowded platform of people, all these humans absorbed in their lives, some just going through the motions, while others, the lucky ones, are happily moving along in their lives, without any care in the world.  
  
When he met her gaze, she stared back at him openly, perhaps defiantly. When he glanced at her hands he saw a ring, and if he remembered correctly, a wedding ring goes on the left hand.  
  
Memory is an unreliable thing, you know. Amnesia can happen to anyone, everyone’s brains are equally vulnerable to the chance of it happening to them.  
  
People can convince of themselves of anything, if they try hard enough, or not try at all.  
  
(“You’re a fucking coward, you know that?” she says. “But you’re not too bad to look at.” She holds his worn shirt in her bruised fist.  
  
Both of them, they would realize later, had the urge to run from their lives and invent themselves anew.  But these urges were fickle, unpractical, they knew. At the end of the day, choosing to abandon your life behind was risky, unless you really knew what you were doing, if you’ve done this before, or have done life-changing, reckless moves in the past and gotten away with it. Neither one of them had a clue, since neither one of them had ever rebelled, for they learnt a long time ago, when they were still the impressionable youth of their generation, that going against the wishes of the people around you—the ones who claimed to accept and care for you no matter what, and what a lie that is, and is it really possible to keep track of all the lies you are told when young—  
  
It just wasn’t worth it, not conforming to society. Nothing was really worth it, if you truly thought about it. And he couldn’t tell if it was brave or cowardly of him to actually believe that.  
  
He was lying to himself all along. And he’s sorry for confusing you. Sorry for many things, some of which he’s too scared to admit, but he’s never believed himself to be reliable so why should anyone believe that? He’s sorry for being an unreliable narrator but he only has a shaky memory to rely on, just like everyone else.  
  
Can you see now, can you see the connections—unreliable brains, unreliable memory, unreliable him, his unreliable memory of her and her unreliable memory of him, both of their retellings of true events unknowingly twisted to the point of being untrustworthy—  
  
He’s sorry for getting ahead of himself. He always forgets that real people are relying on him to tell a good story, that it’s not just all in his head. Unknown references, inside jokes,  thoughts, emotions—all of them must be explained for those who weren’t involved to understand—he gets that, he does, it’s just that—  
  
He wonders why he even bothers, sometimes.  
  
Being the weak bastard he is he wonders if she still thinks about him. Wonders if she thinks about the good or the bad. Maybe both, maybe nothing at all, maybe she was nothing but a delusion all along—maybe, maybe, maybe—  
  
Oh dear, he’s getting off track again, isn’t he? Just take his irresponsible storytelling for what it is.  
  
Idiotic ramblings of a worthless human being.)

 

 

 

 

He looked up at his mirror and there it was; his distorted, haunting reflection. Maybe this is what he actually looks like, deep inside, a dark shadow living in human flesh.  
  
(Can you see right through me? Do you know me better than I know myself? These are the questions he’s always wanted to ask her. He’s never really known himself, you see, all his life, in fact. He wants to know if it’s true—  
  
But no, society dictates that you never ask the kind of questions people are afraid of. They tell you it’s for your own good, that you won’t like the answer.  
  
When really, it’s  _them_  that’s afraid.)  
  
And staying on topic is harder than you think. But people don’t realize that until they’re the ones seated with the task of describing things coming from their point of view, justifying your actions and the ones of those involved.  
  
He sincerely hopes you never have to find out what it’s personally like to go through it. But hope doesn’t mean as much as we would like, no matter how much we wish for it to be otherwise.  
  
Hope is all he can offer you, unfortunately. Hope and his rubbish narrative.

 

 

 

 

It only took them two days after meeting before they fucked each other. He wishes he could say that she tempted him, seduced him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he gave in. That she was never wearing a wedding ring every time they met. At least then, he could claim ignorance. That way, he would have the excuse of not knowing what he was getting into—understandably weak for a beautiful woman, yes, but not really to blame.  
  
Instead, he willingly engaged in an affair with a married woman. His father would be disappointed in him, wouldn’t he? He would probably beat him with a lamp again for this, when mother wasn’t around.  
  
He can imagine what he’d say;  _I hope her pussy was worth it, son. I hope it was worth getting outed by the reporters and having them ridicule you. The wife of a famous celebrity, cheating on her husband with a janitor. The cheating whore found a lowly janitor to fuck, over her wealthy husband? Can you believe that? She risked her marriage for scum. Of all people to have an affair with, she chose you. How the fuck did you get so lucky?_  
  
He doesn’t know why he got so lucky, either. But he wasn’t as lucky as people like to think.

 

 

 

 

He more than anyone knows the dangers of giving false hope, but he’s always foolish enough to try, which is why, when faced with a recording camera, he says:  
  
“Me and Liz are going to keep seeing each other. We’re not letting him get in our way. He doesn’t love her. He treats her like a slave and she doesn’t deserve to be treated that way.”  
  
(To this day he regrets his answer to the reporters. He still feels guilty, but at the same time,  _how could he have known—_ ).

 

 

 

 

If you couldn’t already tell, their story used to be a popular tale in the media. They were portrayed as the star-crossed lovers by some and amoral filth by others. But each portrayal had one thing in common; all of them were wrong.  
  
But it wasn’t for lack of trying. They asked us to sit down with them and tell them our version of events. We didn’t budge, because we knew that they didn’t care about portraying us accurately, they didn’t actually care about our lives. They just wanted a juicy story to tell, and if they had to bend the truth to make it sound more interesting, then so be it. He’s not sure he had it in him to properly describe things back then, either.  
  
Hell, he’s doing a shitty job of it now.

 

 

 

 

You have to understand, he’s only doing this, being a narrator, because he wants you to know the truth. If you try looking at all the records of their affair, you’ll see how the journalists saw them. You won’t see the whole truth.  
  
Perhaps you shouldn’t be allowed to know what really happened. Perhaps she, the woman he admittingly still loves, wouldn’t want you to know any of this.  
  
But someone should know the truth, besides the people involved in this sordid tale.  
  
So whoever you are, be it man or woman, the wealthy or poor, the disabled or able-bodied, the mentally-ill or sane, you have the right to know.  
  
You may wish for detail and a depth no one else, especially not the journalists, were privy too. He can’t promise you that. Some things are too hard to talk about, you see, so he’ll keep this short and sweet (isn’t that how the phrase goes, although the word bitter would be more appropriate).  
  
His name, this narrator’s name and the name of the man he’s been talking about, is Finn. Her name was Liz, short for Elizabeth.  
  
Liz got married to an abusive husband. Her husband was famous and her family refused to help her when she came to them in need. Thus, she learned to tolerate her good-for-nothing husband. She thought she had no way to escape, so she didn’t even try.  
  
One day she meets Finn, a lowly janitor, at a train station. Liz is there to greet her husband from his vacation tour while Finn has just gotten off his train.  
  
There’s no love at first sight bullshit, no sparks or fireworks. Just a man and a woman with so much self-hatred inside themselves that they didn’t even notice it anymore.  
  
They were both looking to escape, so instead of escaping in healthy, recommended ways, they escaped by losing themselves in each other.  
  
He couldn’t tell you if she ever loved him, or still does.  He likes to think she did and maybe still does, but he can’t know for sure. He can, however, tell you that he did and does.  
  
Liz’s husband caught them red-handed. It’s their fault really, for being foolish enough to do it on her marriage bed. He can’t tell you why they did it but he suspects it’s because they knew they were doomed from the start, so taking an unnecessary risk wasn’t going to mean anything in the long run. Besides, there’s a thrill to fucking somewhere you can get caught that they didn’t want to pass up on.  
  
Liz’s husband went to the journalists to tell them about the affair, so they could shame her and her janitor lover.  
  
The news spread like wildfire and he made the mistake of answering one of the reporter’s questions. They would follow them around, you see, like fishermen hoping for a fish to take the bait. And he did, in the hopes that the footage and his statement would reach Liz, help her understand that he still wanted to be with her, despite her husband getting in the way. He also did it as a fuck you to her husband, he’s not gonna lie.  
  
This, of course, backfired and caused Liz’s husband to beat her almost to the point of death. Her mother, who knew about their affair through the media, told Finn she was in the hospital.  
  
It was too much for Liz, you see. She never wanted this. He thinks she expected a quick fling with an unsuspecting janitor and then moving on to continue playing housewife to a miserable bastard.  
  
Instead of going through the hassle of divorce, Liz left. As far as he knows, she didn’t tell anyone where she was going. No one bothered to find her. He knew that even if he did find her, nothing would come of it. She would reject him.  
  
The media caught whiff of this and speculated tirelessly of her reasoning. Some thought her husband or her janitor lover ran her out of the country. Each theory got more and more outlandish. Eventually the media coverage died down and everyone moved on to the next news sensation.  
  
Memory is unreliable, remember?  
  
Finn, the narrator, the janitor, whatever you want to refer to him as, never found out where Liz went and whether or not she’s still alive.  
  
Depending on how long it’s been since he’s constructed this message, Finn might be dead too, whether from old age, or something else.  
  
Finn is sorry, for himself and for you, that he doesn’t know what happened to Liz after she left, or where she went, or her point of view.  
  
Finn is sorry that he has to cut this story short. Finn knows that it might leave you unsatisfied and he’s sorry.  
  
Finn is sorry for all the times he’s had to apologize and he’s sorry for all the times he didn’t.  
  
This message is ending. Finn wishes you well.  
  
This message is ending. Finn wishes there were more to say.  
  
This message is ending.

 

 

 

 

Finn wishes everything would end happily ever after.

 

 

 

 

**IV**

There’s no point in talking when your words don’t make sense.  
  
It isn’t his fault, they say. They all say it isn’t his fault.  
  
But you know what doesn’t make sense the most? That kind of reasoning.  
  
(His gun his alcohol his car  
  
the blood mixed in with the color of her lipstick it wasn’t him this time it was her her her.)  
  
They’ll tell you it wasn’t his fault. What a lie that is.  
  
Of course it’s his fault. How can it not be?  
  
(What he didn’t tell the police is that when he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was her blood red mouth and her forehead dripping blood red and her broken pretty blood red body crumpled in the seat the smashed windshield of glass had blood red on it but what part of it was her lipstick and what part was blood aren’t they the same thing maybe he should wake her up and ask her.)  
  
She suffered for his mistake and he’s the one who should’ve died. Should’ve but didn’t.  
  
There a lot of things that should happen but don’t. She should have known not to get in the car with him. She should have left him to his own devices. But no she had to be the good person that helped others in need. Even his drunken fucked up angry self.  
  
Then again he supposes if she had he would have done something worse. You can’t put it past him. People always underestimated his self-control. It’s why he’s stopped telling people he’s had to go to anger management classes due to a violent rage that could be tracked down to his childhood. He can tell that no one really believes him when he tells them so what’s the point?  
  
(Her delicate mouth thinned. “You’re a mean drunk. Good to know.”)

 

 

 

 

Sometimes he wakes up and thinks it was all one big horrible nightmare the kind that makes you break out into a cold sweat and makes you think the bad things are still happening after you’re awake.  
  
He’s never had a nightmare that remained his reality after he woke up. Perhaps his paranoia in the aftermath of nightmares was well founded.  
  
(Somewhere along the line he remembers a passage that stood out to him in The Crucible when he read it in high school.  _There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!_ How fitting a quote. His eyes were consumed by blood red once more.)

 

 

 

 

He smiled.  
  
He thinks that it doesn’t matter if he ever finds out if he killed her on purpose or on accident—he thinks the terms are manslaughter and coldblooded murder—because regardless of intent when he noticed her drenched in blood red before he looked at the windshield and the rest of the car when all he could process was her—  
  
He smiled even though he didn’t feel anything not happiness or bitterness or irony. Nothing that required a smile.  
  
He felt nothing at all.  
  
And still. He smiled.  
  
So tell him again that it isn’t his fault.  
  
Tell this angry monster of a man that he’s not guilty.  
  
Go on.  _Tell him_.

 

 

 

 

“We don’t know what’s wrong with Finn. You guys are great parents. I don’t know why he’s acting this way."  
  
Staring at his drawing he could still hear them. He let himself get lost with the blurry dark shapes on his paper. He wondered if he could have McDonalds after this stupid adult meeting was over.

 

 

 

 

They’re all fools. It’s so easy for them to say they know how his mind works. Act like they know everything. They don’t know anything. They don’t know a single thing about him. Lying comes in handy you know?

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t understand why he gets detention for winning against Cody. He can’t eat with his friends while in detention and they’re making him bring home the detention slip. They were just playing a game. Cody fought him so he fought back. It’s not his fault he realized that choking was a better option than punching before Cody did.

 

 

 

 

Nobody’s a monster until you have reason to believe otherwise. People can be so trusting can’t they?

 

 

 

 

First reactions to something can be the most telling. (There is beauty in destruction. Maybe that's why he smiled.)

 

 

 

 

Finn never told anyone that when it came to stories he could always relate to the bad guys more.

 

 

 

 

**V**

Fingernails clawing deep past his eyelids, tearing the soft tissue underneath, the color of his eyes exploding under the pressure—his throat is lined with glass and his screams are shattering it everywhere—  
  
Finn’s eyes scramble to make sense of his surroundings. He can’t see past the fuzzy darkness. His entire body aches. It’s too quiet.  
  
Perhaps this is where he truly belongs, with only darkness and silence as his company.

 

 

 

 

**VI**

There are too many worlds out there to count, beyond our comprehension. They exist among the stars and galaxies and black holes, shifting and revolving like the planet earth we live on.  
  
No one world is the same, not entirely. Even the smallest of changes can make all the difference.    
  
Liz Garvey meets Finn Kirkwood after being hired by Police Commissioner Richard Miller and a new world is created once more.


End file.
